Sunday 20 June 2010

RONALD WRIGHT, GENTLEMAN HOMOSEXUAL

I'm back...loyal readers (all paltry nine of you...come on people)! I'm afraid my attention was temporarily diverted by a new art project (more of which later), the well-stocked biography shelves of the Chelsea library and those pesky three-a-day World Cup fixtures (as the professionals call them)...sigh...one must endure those hours of 9 to 5 Kafkaesque drudgery somehow...


So...on to Mr Ronald Wright, Gentleman Homosexual (left). The Schwartz Gallery in Hackney...(a converted warehouse in a sea of converted warehouses) recently mounted a show on the life and times of Ronald Wright, a man well known amongst historic London gay circles as an artist, psychic, nude model and general bon vivant. The Schwartz show wasn't particularly interesting in terms of his work - Wright's own artistic output comprising primarily of decidely amateurish drawings of glamorous film stars. The man's genuine 'talent' resided in his good looks, brawny physicality and well hung family jewels.

The real fascination of the Schwartz show for me lay in Wright's personal photographs featuring a quaint, retro, black and white English '60s aesthetic. These vintage images consisted largely of beefcake 'anatomy' shots of the well built Wright (reminiscent of a Daniel Craig In Too Tight Budgie Smugglers James Bond). The interior styling and the clothes however, the hairstyles, even Wright's nerdy glasses in these photographs evoke the London of the Krays, the Profumo Scandal, hip backcombed barnets, sharp suits and an illegal (yet presumably extremely stylish)  underground homosexual scene.

I also wanted to publish these images in response to the (sometimes blatant, sometimes insidious but evidently ubiquitous) sexism and total objectification of women I find myself increasingly enduring in this fair city. The Backlash, it seems is finally arriving, our left-wing media outlets reintroducing feminism back onto the agenda in these post-ironic times now that we have a new government sprouting a 'new politics' (still largely white, male and Etonian) in a depressing new Age of Austerity.

So I implore you, dear readers...feast your eyes on Ronald Wright's massive cock!

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